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Nov 12, 2012
11/12
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mr. gardner, first of all, tell us what u.s. telecom is and what you represent. >> guest: well, we represent the telephone companies in the united states of america from the very biggest -- seizen, at&t -- to some of the very smallest. and what we try to do is really get together as a group, put together ideas so that we can really take care of our consumers in a better way. >> host: so when you talk about the small telephone companies, how many are there out here in the united states now? >> guest: there's thousands of telephone companies in the u.s. still, and so there's been plenty of consolidation, but there's still a lot of very small telephone companies. we have from verizon to small companies that are co-ops even involved in united states telephone association today. so still many different business issues as a part of that. we all try to work together to really solve common issues. that's what the whole purpose of the association is. >> host: and we want to get into some of those policy issues in just a minute, but first
mr. gardner, first of all, tell us what u.s. telecom is and what you represent. >> guest: well, we represent the telephone companies in the united states of america from the very biggest -- seizen, at&t -- to some of the very smallest. and what we try to do is really get together as a group, put together ideas so that we can really take care of our consumers in a better way. >> host: so when you talk about the small telephone companies, how many are there out here in the united...
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Nov 13, 2012
11/12
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. >> host: well, mr. gardner, you talked about the 93%. have you partaken of the access america, the broadband act funds and how have they contributed to increasing that percentage? >> guest: a participant in a very small way. we're a price cap company as they call verizon, at&t, several of the large to mid-sized carriers, and the fcc wisely knew that to come up with the new model took time so they set aside $300 million to really a year annually to fund investment in rural america while we worked through the model, and windstream was eligible to take advantage of up to $60 million of that. the part that i think we got slightly wrong with regards to that was setting a limit at 775. unless you could add a customer for an incremental 775, you can't take÷ the money. in a case like windstream where we built out so extensively in our networks with private money, we were unable to take, i think, we took about 1% of the that $60 million. the unfortunate part, we got the policy right. we got $300 million this year and $300 million next year, but
. >> host: well, mr. gardner, you talked about the 93%. have you partaken of the access america, the broadband act funds and how have they contributed to increasing that percentage? >> guest: a participant in a very small way. we're a price cap company as they call verizon, at&t, several of the large to mid-sized carriers, and the fcc wisely knew that to come up with the new model took time so they set aside $300 million to really a year annually to fund investment in rural...
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Nov 10, 2012
11/12
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. >> mr. gardner, with the new congress, how do you feel about a rewrite of some of the major telecommunications legislative pieces, 1996 telecom act? do you think it's important to treat your business as one big whole or do you think a piece mill approach to legislative policy change social security the way to go? >> i think 1996 was a long time ago and there are some great parts of the 1996 act that i think encourage competition which is very good for the consumer. so we need to make sure that we pay attention to that. but let's face it, look what happened with the internet between 1996 and 2012, the whole sworled changing. that's what cyber security, all these issues we've been talking about, good old piece mill. i don't think of it that way. this stuff is happening real time. i don't see a way to deal with them collectively in one piece of legislation but probably better to deal with these individually. >> you call yourself still a telephone company but is there such a thing anymore? >> no
. >> mr. gardner, with the new congress, how do you feel about a rewrite of some of the major telecommunications legislative pieces, 1996 telecom act? do you think it's important to treat your business as one big whole or do you think a piece mill approach to legislative policy change social security the way to go? >> i think 1996 was a long time ago and there are some great parts of the 1996 act that i think encourage competition which is very good for the consumer. so we need to...
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Nov 29, 2012
11/12
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mr. speaker, a message from the senate. the secretary: mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: madam secretary. the secretary: i have been directed by the senate to inform the house that the senate has passed s. 1998, cited as the d.h.s. audit requirement target act of 2012, in which the concurrence of the house is requested. the speaker pro tempore: the chair now recognizes the gentleman from north carolina, mr. jones, for five minutes. mr. jones: mr. speaker, thank you very much. yesterday in the republican conference i acknowledged that five marines and one soldier from my district, the third district of north carolina, had been killed in afghanistan by the afghans they were training. this to me is just does not make any sense at all why we stay in afghanistan. i also shared with the conference an email i got from the former commandant of the united states marine corps, who has actually been my advisor on afghanistan for three years. the commandant, i said, mr. commandant, why do we stan
mr. speaker, a message from the senate. the secretary: mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: madam secretary. the secretary: i have been directed by the senate to inform the house that the senate has passed s. 1998, cited as the d.h.s. audit requirement target act of 2012, in which the concurrence of the house is requested. the speaker pro tempore: the chair now recognizes the gentleman from north carolina, mr. jones, for five minutes. mr. jones: mr. speaker, thank you very much. yesterday in...
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Nov 28, 2012
11/12
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gardner. >> he'll be in here when we do the northeast corridor. we will hear his report. >> i don't know if we'll send him here or not. >> we'd love to have him. >> i know that. >> we'll just subpoena him. >> i have to control what he says -- no, i'm kidding. do i need to wipe the smile off of joe mchugh's face? >> he didn't have a smile. >> we'll move forward in the business lines. the other piece of this which had had i not been so long winded on other parts what i said earlier is really the matrix part of this, and we have a structure of chiefs. chiefs mechanical officer, chief engineer, chief safety officer, and they set the standards and the budgets necessary for the business line chiefs to carry out so you have not just a customer focus but a bottom line focus and there is the expertise that's there necessary for us to make improvements in mechanical maintenance and improvements in safety and other things that are needed to support these general managers to get their jobs done. some of them are filled. some of them are posted and they will a
gardner. >> he'll be in here when we do the northeast corridor. we will hear his report. >> i don't know if we'll send him here or not. >> we'd love to have him. >> i know that. >> we'll just subpoena him. >> i have to control what he says -- no, i'm kidding. do i need to wipe the smile off of joe mchugh's face? >> he didn't have a smile. >> we'll move forward in the business lines. the other piece of this which had had i not been so long winded...